Bloomington man returns to car restoration after devastating theft of 1960 Corvette

It was five years ago this week that Dave Fischbach walked out of a Holiday Inn hotel in Southgate, Michigan, and realized that his treasured car, a three-time winner of the National Corvette Show, was gone.

The 1960 Corvette he custom built was parked inside a 40-foot-long trailer. It was also gone. And the 2000 Jeep Wrangler in there with it. And the Ford F-450 conversion truck that pulled the aluminum trailer.

I stole the headline for this column from one of the many newspaper articles written about the 2017 incident. Among others were: "National Corvette Show Winner Stolen, Burned, and Chopped," and, from the Detroit News, "Bound for Autorama, ’vette instead meets its doom."

My Favorite Ride:Grandson hopes someone knows the whereabouts of a certain 1959 Impala

Unseasonably warm weather in Detroit had convinced Fischbach to haul the Corvette to the 2017 Detroit Autorama, the premiere showcase of hot rods from across the country.

He selected the Southgate Holiday Inn near Detroit because of its well-lit parking lot in front of the building and an overnight security officer. No worries.

The front of the hotel was glass, he recalled, and the pickup and long trailer took up eight parking spaces 30 feet from the front door. How could they, and the precious cargo inside, just disappear on a Tuesday night?

"I came out early, about 6, since I needed to have the car there to unload before 7:30, and I saw it wasn't there. My first reaction was I had walked out the wrong door, then I realized it was the door I came in. My second thought was that the hotel had towed it, but they hadn't."

He called the police. No one saw what happened, and security cameras just showed the truck and trailer driving away.

The teal-colored 1996 Ford truck was found burned in a field. The trailer, located 40 miles away, had been trashed and destroyed. Cops found the Jeep, which had been set afire but didn't burn, in good condition. The radio was missing.

My Favorite Ride:Driving stolen Porsche, Corvette and Mustang around lands man in jail

A few days later, the high-tech Corvette was recovered. It had been stripped of valuable parts, its custom fiberglass body then cut into three pieces and burned at three different sites around Detroit. 

Fischbach was heartbroken to see the car destroyed, the car that the previous year had received the top honor at the National Corvette Car show for the third time.

Building and showing one-of-a-kind cars had defined his life. He started repairing and restoring vehicles as a teenager, and for four decades owned Dave’s Collision and Car Repair in Bellaire, Michigan.

After the Corvette disaster and the national media attention it brought, Fischbach lost his passion for cars, deciding to sell the vehicles in his collection and be done with it. His family convinced him to take time to recover from the loss of a car he spent hundreds of hours perfecting.

When he retired a few years ago, his family moved to Bloomington, where he's gravitated back to restoring and selling classic cars.

He's got a few in his collection he vows to never sell, including two 1966 Chevrolet Impalas. One is a rare convertible.

The other is a black hardtop, with red interior.

Given the universal appeal of the Impala, I'll need to be finding out more about these cars, right?

Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride columnist Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com, 812-331-4362 or 812-318-5967.